George Will's Mitt Moment

There is nothing quite like those moments when George Effing Will loosens the ol' cravat, rolls up the sleeves, has the help cut up his red meat for him, and decides that somebody needs a good, pointlessly polysyllabic, faux-erudite whacking around in his Washington Post column. Long time ago, he wrote that he could hear in then-vice-president (and candidate) George H.W. Bush "the tinny arf" of "a lapdog." Over the weekend, he set the world of elite punditry on its ear by getting all up in Mitt Romney's grill. To wit:

Romney, supposedly the Republican most electable next November, is a recidivist reviser of his principles who is not only becoming less electable; he might damage GOP chances of capturing the Senate. Republican successes down the ticket will depend on the energies of the Tea Party and other conservatives, who will be deflated by a nominee whose blurry profile in caution communicates only calculated trimming.

Oh, the trenchancy! Our two-fisted, word-cracking action hero, marshaling his researchers into fierce combat, wielding his thesaurus like Achilles with his spear! "Recidivist reviser of his principles"! I mean, Lord above, everybody's cryin' mercy here. It's like finding out that your spinster aunt had brass knuckles under that shawl. It's like you botched the fifth declension and your Latin master pulled his Glock and popped a cap in your ass. Oh, the musk! Oh, the muscular, deep, sweaty glow of that prose. It's a gladiator movie in tweed! I may faint dead away. Truly.

(And, oh, the peroration! Writing with his quill dipped in stronger Earl Grey than usual, Will declares, "Has conservatism come so far, surmounting so many obstacles, to settle, at a moment of economic crisis, for this?" Mitt Romney, spitting on the graves of the men of whom the bards sing so sweetly, George Effing Will did not hand his balls to the Reagans and lend his sword and shield to the defense of crackpot economics and (lately) climate-change denial for the likes of you. Feel his scorn, ye worm, and despair.)

I tremble to mention that the Achilles of Camden Yards has missed a point here. But he has, alas, and he has made a comparison that is inapt at best:

"Republicans may have found their Michael Dukakis, a technocratic Massachusetts governor who takes his bearings from 'data' (although there is precious little to support Romney's idea that in-state college tuition for children of illegal immigrants is a powerful magnet for such immigrants) and who believes elections should be about (in Dukakis's words) 'competence,' not 'ideology.'"

(It should be noted for the historical record that, when Dukakis finally ran against the elder Bush back in '88, George Effing Will — much to his own surprise, I'm sure — found tinny arf'ing rather melodious after all.)

Here's the problem. Dukakis ran for president as a "technocratic Massachusetts governor" because he was proud of what he'd done in Massachusetts. He ran on "The Massachusetts Miracle." It was that pride in accomplishment that the late Lee Atwater, who had the instincts of a predatory reptile, chose to attack, sensing that what would not bend would shatter. Romney, on the other hand, had one signature accomplishment as governor — his reform of the health-care system in Massachusetts. And now, because the Republican party has lost its mind at its most basic level — the level at which all that Tea Party "energy" that has so charmed George Effing Will is sloshing around like vomit in the back of a college-town taxicab — Romney has had to run away from that accomplishment as a presidential candidate. It is the ur-flip of all his flops. It is the one that has defined him, and the one that has made all his subsequent waffling look even worse than it is, which is pretty goddamn awful all by itself.

In short. Romney straddles because there are only three choices for a Republican candidate in 2011. You can straddle. You can be completely batshit loony. Or you can be Jon Huntsman. George Effing Will has overseen the degeneration of the conservative movement — which began when conservatism embraced Ronald Reagan's fairy tales about welfare queens and when it boarded the supply-side crazee train — and he has cheered many of its excesses along the way. That he has chosen this moment — The Moment of Mitt — to stop sulking in his tent may be more about deeply rooted guilt than anything else. Like Patroclus, Mitt Romney has donned borrowed armor and gone into battle disguised as a conservative and without George Effing Will's permission. The gods weep. Truly, they do.

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